1. Statement of the Technical Field
The inventive arrangements relate to Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) and Printed Wiring Boards (PWBs) having embedded passive materials, and more particularly to systems and method for measuring and tracking geometric changes of the embedded passive materials during a lamination process.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is a growing demand to design and manufacture smaller circuit boards having increased functionality. As such, a new circuit board technology has emerged. This circuit board technology deals with embedding passive components directly into circuit boards. This embedding is achieved by placing one or more passive components between two (2) interconnecting substrates of a circuit board. The passive components include, but are not limited to, capacitors, resistors and inductors. It should be noted that there are many benefits to embedding passive components into a circuit board. These benefits include, but are not limited to, decreased board area requirements, decreased wiring density requirements, decreased assembly costs and increased circuit performance due to shorter signal paths.
Despite the advantages of embedded passive components, the technique suffers from certain drawbacks. For example, rather large variations can occur in the value of the embedded passive components. These induced errors result from dimensional changes of the embedded passive components that occur during a lamination process. The dimensional changes include, but are not limited to, an increase in a width, length and/or thickness of the passive material. The changes in electrical characteristics of the passive components can result in undesirable circuit performance.